


Take This Waltz

by destinyofshipwreck



Category: Figure Skating RPF
Genre: F/F, Sharing a Bed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-30
Updated: 2018-05-30
Packaged: 2019-05-15 23:48:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,229
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14800262
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/destinyofshipwreck/pseuds/destinyofshipwreck
Summary: Sometime in the night Tessa drifts across the midline of the bed, toward her, and when Kaitlyn wakes in the predawn light, it's with Tessa's face inches from the back of her neck, and Tessa's cold feet tucked between her calves, and Tessa's hand resting lightly on her side, fingers splayed a little to fit in the furrows between her ribs.She breathes slowly and shallowly, so as not to disturb the arrangement, until the 6:00 a.m. alarm breaks the spell.//Or: five bed-sharing occasions, over eight years.





	Take This Waltz

The first time they end up in bed together really is unavoidable: there's only a single, enormous one in the room they've been assigned, no couch to crash on, no extra rooms, no teammates it makes sense to swap rooms with. The concierge is apologetic about the mixup and offers them a cot, which Kaitlyn tries out experimentally, even as Tessa laughs at how absurd it is to think that they couldn't share a king. The cot sits not quite level on rusty casters and its mattress is thin and sagging, the coils palpable through the foam.

"Don't be stupid," says Tessa. "You'd be a wreck tomorrow, your poor back. Come on." She pats the vast expanse of bed next to her.

"I just don't want to crowd you," says Kaitlyn doubtfully.

"You could never," says Tessa.

Sometime in the night Tessa drifts across the midline of the bed, toward her, and when Kaitlyn wakes in the predawn light, it's with Tessa's face inches from the back of her neck, and Tessa's cold feet tucked between her calves, and Tessa's hand resting lightly on her side, fingers splayed a little to fit in the furrows between her ribs.

She breathes slowly and shallowly, so as not to disturb the arrangement, until the 6:00 a.m. alarm breaks the spell.

Behind her, Tessa yawns, squeezes Kaitlyn's side once, then withdraws her hand, stretching extravagantly.

"See? Not crowded," she says.

"I'll make coffee," says Kaitlyn.

Later, after they've showered and dressed, Tessa comes up behind Kaitlyn while she's braiding her hair in the bathroom, and wraps a hand around her left shoulder.

"Is this the one you dislocated?" she asks, rubbing it lightly through the thin fabric of Kaitlyn's T-shirt.

"Yeah," says Kaitlyn. "But it's been a while, it's all good now."

"You're such a beast, to just work through it," says Tessa, in a tone of fervent admiration.

"Well, I couldn't  _not_ ," she says.

"Still," says Tessa.

Kaitlyn glances up to see Tessa looking at her in the mirror, her lips slightly parted, and they lock eyes there for a moment, before Kaitlyn looks away again, shyly.

❧

They're sharing a room again, a double this time, and Tessa automatically drops her suitcase on the same bed where Kaitlyn's own suitcase is already laying open, and pulls off her sweats, leaving only her oversized Team Canada tank top and her plain black thong, and crawls into the other bed next to her, like it's just the routine now. God.

"Tessa," she says. "I don't know if—" she pauses, because it feels so  _juvenile_ to be nervous every time, it's so fucking  _awkward_ , but Tessa is looking at her with curiosity, and it's too late to stop.

"I want to tell you, you know, before you jump into bed with me, you should know, I'm a lesbian."

Tessa doesn't say anything, just reaches for her hand, and squeezes it.

"It's just," says Kaitlyn, swallowing the lump in her throat, "I want you to hear it from me before you hear it from someone else, because straight girls have been weird to me about it before, like everyone thinks I only want in their pants or I can't control myself around them, and it's not like that, or they don't want to be around me anymore in case someone else thinks they’re my girlfriend, or—"

"Is that why you moved away from Waterloo?" Tessa asks softly.

"No," says Kaitlyn, "But it was a nice side benefit, I guess. A fresh start."

"Well, it's not a problem for me," says Tessa.

"Thanks," says Kaitlyn. "You've always been so supportive about everything, I don't know why I thought—"

"No, I mean it's  _really_  not a problem," says Tessa, and then she leans forward and cups Kaitlyn's chin in her palm and kisses her, gently, on the mouth.  _Oh_.

"I guess I just assumed you were with Scott," says Kaitlyn, when she recovers her composure.

"I kind of am, sometimes," says Tessa. "It's complicated, like an on-again, off-again thing. It's weird to explain. Mostly off, lately." She makes a pained face.

"Ah," says Kaitlyn.

"Sorry if I took you by surprise," says Tessa, "It's just, I love how you watch me at the gym, I sort of, you know, figured."

"I thought I was subtle," says Kaitlyn. A buoyant feeling courses through her like a river, from a source somewhere deep in her abdomen, and she's suddenly short of breath.

"You would have been, if I hadn't been looking at you," says Tessa, and leans forward to kiss her again, this time sliding a hand up her cheek, and parting her lips with the tip of her tongue. Kaitlyn gasps and Tessa ventures deeper, exploratorily, like she wants to taste every part of Kaitlyn's mouth, and she's pulling Kaitlyn's hair from its braids and weaving her fingers into it to draw her closer, and Kaitlyn sees stars.

"We'd better stop here," she says, pulling away to take a deep breath. "Competition tomorrow and all. You're kind of my rival, Tess." The words sound ridiculous coming out of her mouth.

Tessa is flushed all the way to her collarbone, and there's sweat beaded at her hairline, and her pupils are so dilated that Kaitlyn can hardly see the green of her eyes. "If you say so," she says.

"Do you have plans after," Kaitlyn asks.

"Not yet," Tessa says. "Should we just come back here after whatever happens, and—"

"Yes," says Kaitlyn.

"Good," says Tessa.

Kaitlyn sleeps fitfully, waking every hour or so, thinking she can feel Tessa's body arching and trembling under her hands, thinking she can taste her, thinking she needs to stop, only to find it was a dream every time, and that Tessa is across the bed from her, still, out of reach, but only just.

❧

During warmups before the compulsory dance, Tessa circles closer and closer to her, until she’s finally within conspiratorial whispering proximity; she leans over and murmurs, right into Kaitlyn’s ear, “I brought something with me I want to show you later.”

“Is that so,” whispers Kaitlyn.

“It'll ruin it if I say what it is, so you’ll have to wait and see,” whispers Tessa, then gives her an exaggerated collegial pat on the back, between her shoulder blades, and strokes off back to the opposite end of the ice, where Scott is waiting for her.

It turns out to be a lingerie set in champagne, a shade paler than Tessa's skin, and she sees it that evening, after debriefing over dinner with Andrew and their coaches, escaping at the earliest possible opportunity back to her room, where Tessa is waiting for her, stretched out on the bed. From the door it reads as so perfectly sheer that it pulls all the air from Kaitlyn's lungs.

The light from the bedside lamp is soft but the angle is harsh, and Tessa is all shadows: her auburn hair in a bob that just brushes her shoulders, shadowing her face; the shadows of her collarbones, the shadows her breasts cast on her sternum; the shadows of the underwires in her bra, the cording in the lace, her navel piercing, her hipbone.

_Wow_ , is what Kaitlyn thinks, but she says, "Did you bring this just to seduce me, or do you never leave home without it?"

"I feel like it would be a little incriminating to say," says Tessa, and Kaitlyn crosses the room in two strides and takes Tessa's hands in her own and kisses them both, one after another, and Tessa grabs her shoulders to pull her down onto the bed, and then she's sitting astride Kaitlyn, and her hands are slipping greedily under Kaitlyn's blouse, unbuttoning it and tugging it off her shoulders.  


Kaitlyn's so nervous she's all fumbling hands, and their teeth knock together when Tessa leans in to kiss her, and it hits her all at once how exhausted she is, from the evening skate, the day's adrenaline, and the sleepless night. Tessa feels it, and backs off immediately.

"Is it me or is it tired in here," Tessa says, swinging her leg over Kaitlyn and coming to rest on the edge of the bed, where she grimaces, massaging one of her calves.

"Not just you," says Kaitlyn, "Now that you mention it."

Tessa locates the remote under her notebook on the nightstand, turns on the TV, and finds Sportsnet, where the Stars are up three-one against the Canucks.

"Not to waste a good outfit, but maybe we should just—" Tessa trails off as she reaches for Kaitlyn to pull her blouse off the rest of the way, then helps her with her jeans, then draws her into an embrace, leaning back against the headboard, and tucks the comforter over both of them.

"You're right," says Kaitlyn, trying and failing to stifle a yawn. 

"It's the thought that counts," says Tessa, reorganizing her limbs around Kaitlyn in her lap. Tessa leans forward to kiss her forehead, and Kaitlyn drifts off in a matter of minutes, with the game still on TV, the volume low, and Tessa's hands in her hair.

They're not expected downstairs until eight the next morning, but they wake at six by habit, and Kaitlyn takes her time with Tessa, who's still drowsy and languid, kissing up the length of each scar on each perfect shin, leaving precise teethmark bruises along the expanses of her inner thighs, before spreading her cunt open with her fingers and kissing her there, slow and soft, cataloguing in her heart everything that makes Tessa's hips twitch toward her or her hands tighten in her hair.

She comes with a soft whimper and Kaitlyn slides two fingers inside her to ease her into another orgasm, propping herself up on one elbow to take Tessa's nipple between her teeth, working over her clit with her thumb.

Tessa whispers her name the second time, over and over, like a refrain, and Kaitlyn commits the sound to memory.

They arrive late to breakfast. Kaitlyn can still taste Tessa's cunt on her lips as she drinks the day's first coffee, and every time she glances over at Tessa, sitting across the table from her and down a few feet, between Scott and Marina, Tessa's staring at her mouth, like she can't believe her luck.

❧

Kaitlyn tries to stay up to wait for Tessa the night of the free dance in Sochi, but sleep overtakes her around 4:00 a.m., and she's dead to the world until the clumsy scraping of a keycard against the doorjamb rouses her, well after dawn.

"Hi," she says, levering herself out of bed, once Tessa has figured out the door well enough to open it. "I was wondering when I'd see you. Welcome back."

Tessa is staggering a little, and her blouse is misbuttoned, and her face is streaked with mascara, and she reeks of whiskey and cigarette smoke, and as soon as she's within arm's reach she slouches gratefully into Kaitlyn's embrace and buries her face in her neck.

"You smell like home," murmurs Tessa, mouthing Kaitlyn's collarbone, all tongue and teeth.

"You smell like a distillery," says Kaitlyn. "Let's get you cleaned up."

Tessa offers no objection as Kaitlyn undresses her, then herself, then turns on the shower in their cramped ensuite, then steps with her over the lip of the stall and into the spray. She's swaying on the spot, her arms wrapped around her own torso, Kaitlyn's arms around her too, and after a few minutes she's shaking with sobs, silently, into Kaitlyn's shoulder.

"You'll regret it later if you don't let me wash your hair," says Kaitlyn. Tessa, still pressed against her, nods wordlessly, and Kaitlyn does, massaging shampoo into her scalp, untangling her hair with her fingers.

When the hot water runs out, Kaitlyn lets go of her only long enough to kneel in front of her and dry her off, then wraps Tessa in her silk robe, pulls on her own sweatshirt, and guides her toward the bed.

Tessa stops short, in the centre of the room.

"I need something good to happen today," she says. Her voice is hoarse.

"I know of something," says Kaitlyn. She frees a hand from around Tessa's waist and reaches for her phone on the nightstand, picks out a Leonard Cohen song, turns the volume up all the way, and sets the phone back where it was. The sound is tinny, but still audible over the hum of the electric heater.

"Waltz with me," she says, and rearranges her hands around Tessa, who nods without looking up at her, but leans into the hold. She's a beautiful dancer even when she's drunk off her ass and too miserable to speak.

Halfway through the song, Tessa tentatively takes the lead for a few measures, then passes it back to Kaitlyn, almost inquisitively, conversationally. Kaitlyn hums the melody into her hair, and feels Tessa's smile against her throat, and by the time the last verse rolls around, Tessa is singing the words to her along with Jennifer Warnes:  _I'll dance with you in Vienna, I'll be wearing a river's disguise; the hyacinth wild on my shoulder, my mouth on the dew of your thighs—_

The music fades into silence, and Tessa looks Kaitlyn in the eye for the first time since she stumbled in the door.

"You were right," she says. "Thank you."

"We'll find something else good to do after you sleep it off," says Kaitlyn, and Tessa doesn't resist being led to the bed this time.

Tessa falls asleep on top of her almost immediately. Kaitlyn holds her for a while longer, until there's no way around it, she does have a lunch date with Andrew that she shouldn't skip out on, so she slides out from under Tessa and rearranges the blanket around her. Snoring quietly, wrapped in floral satin, she looks almost untroubled.

_Lunch w/A. Back soon. There's ice cream for you in the freezer. xo_ , Kaitlyn scribbles on a post-it note, and sticks it to the bathroom mirror on her way out.

❧

Tessa didn't break the news of her comeback to Kaitlyn personally, she finds out from the press like everyone else, and she's stung that Tessa didn't tell her, and surprised that she's experiencing it as a betrayal, and upset at the prospect that this is probably the end of her string of victories with Andrew, and angry at herself for thinking even for a second that vigorous competition does not improve her, and the whole thing is just an almighty wretched mess.

The first time they're alone together is when tour season kicks off in Halifax. They've flown in separately, but Tessa is already there in the room in the early evening when Kaitlyn checks into the Delta.

"Hi," says Kaitlyn.

"I missed you," says Tessa, but she's looking at Kaitlyn's body language, a little reserved, and Kaitlyn can tell that she's calculating her next move. It's so unusual to see Tessa this discomfited that she can't hold on to her annoyance.

"Please let me take you out for dinner tonight," Tessa adds, to Kaitlyn's surprise.

"Okay," she says.

"Good," says Tessa. "I made a reservation for seven, we'd better go."

The reservation turns out to be in a dim corner at the Shoe Shop, where they've been before, and where Tessa orders them an enormous charcuterie platter and a bottle of prosecco, and picks out dessert while Kaitlyn is in the washroom, to surprise her with; then she leads Kaitlyn to the public gardens, riotously in bloom, where the gate is locked at dusk but the fences are easily clambered over even in heels, for a brisk surreptitious stroll among the flowers, giddy with the thrill of trespass; then down the hill to the boardwalk, to admire the lights of Dartmouth and the waxing moon reflected in the dark harbour. Neither of them broaches the topic of the upcoming season.

"This was really nice," says Kaitlyn, as they turn west off the waterfront toward the hotel, Tessa's arm slung around her waist.

"I thought you should have a good tourist time, even if you're mad at me," says Tessa.

"I'm not," says Kaitlyn. "I just wish you could've told me."

"I'm sorry if this ruins anything for you and Andrew," says Tessa, in a rush, like she's been waiting to say it all evening. "I'm so proud of you, you've accomplished so much, and—"

Kaitlyn cuts her off. "Don't patronize me, Tessa, don't talk to me like we can't handle  _competition_  from you."

They're in the lobby now, which is humming with other conversations, and they keep their voices low as they walk toward the elevator. Tessa's arm is still around her but now it's stiff, like she's uncertain.

"It's just this," says Kaitlyn, "It's that I  _saw_  you after Sochi, and I  _get_  why you would want to try again, and it hurts that you think I'm  _jealous_. I  _know_  you, Tessa, you know that."

Tessa sighs as they step into an empty elevator, and presses her cheek into Kaitlyn's shoulder. "You do. I'm sorry, I didn't really think you'd be jealous, I was just worried that if I changed something, everything else would get screwed up, and it had been a while since we'd talked, I didn't know how to tell you—"

"Yeah," says Kaitlyn. Tessa is clinging to her now, and her hair is so soft.

"Montreal feels like it's a lot further away than Toronto," says Tessa, into her chest.

"We'll see each other all the time as soon as you're back on the Grand Prix circuit," says Kaitlyn, and kisses her brow. The elevator chimes for their floor.

"So you aren't even a little mad," says Tessa, taking her hand and leading her toward their room.

"I'm afraid not," says Kaitlyn.

"Will you let me make it up to you anyway," says Tessa.

"Depends what you had in mind," says Kaitlyn.

"Just this," says Tessa, unlocking the door and leading Kaitlyn through it and throwing the deadbolt behind them, before she turns and pins Kaitlyn against the wall with her hips,  _hard_ , and kisses her so lightly that Kaitlyn whimpers, craning her neck for  _more_.

Whatever vestiges of hurt or misunderstanding remained burn away like fog when Tessa drops to her knees in front of Kaitlyn and pushes up her skirt, like there's no time to waste, shoving her underwear to one side, and sliding a finger inside her. She's throbbing already, Tessa's urgency to have her is enough, and Tessa's lips and tongue work her over methodically, until she almost loses her footing on the tile floor, gasping; Tessa steadies her with a hand on her abdomen, her shoulders strong enough to support the weight of Kaitlyn's leg thrown over her back, and Kaitlyn comes completely apart for her right there in the foyer, still wearing her jacket, teetering in her stilettos.

Tessa smirks at her from the floor, her lips still glistening wet, then she rises to her feet and kisses Kaitlyn softly again, deep and slow, so she can taste herself on Tessa's tongue.

"I made us dinner reservations in Toronto, too," she says. "And in London, and Winnipeg, the whole tour, actually, just in case."

"I think Montreal won't be too far away, after all," says Kaitlyn.


End file.
